Alleviating Malnutrition in the

Guatemalan

Western Highlands Erica Wood

A Feed By Seed, Inc. initiative

Global Agriculture Education, Development, and Advocacy

   

FEED  BY  SEED  

"Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and feed him for a lifetime"

Feed by Seed is a 501(C) (3) certified non-profit organization established by a current Virginia Tech student, focusing international agriculture education, development, and advocacy. Currently, Feed by Seed is working in Central America.

Feed by Seed's main mission is to: 1) provide immediate necessary food aid, 2) train quality agriculture educators, 3) help individuals obtain needed agricultural materials, 4) develop other regional needs to ensure agricultural and economical sustainable communities, and 5) to be an advocate on behalf of international agriculture and poverty .

Vision Statement: To create agriculturally and economically sufficient communities globally.

   

CONTENTS

Feed  by  Seed  ................................................................................................................................................................................  2  

Executive Summary  ....................................................................................................................................................................  4  

Introduction  ...................................................................................................................................................................................  5  

Geography  .................................................................................................................................................................................  5  

People and Society  .................................................................................................................................................................  5  

Problem  ...........................................................................................................................................................................................  7  

Problem Solution  ......................................................................................................................................................................  11  

Summary  .................................................................................................................................................................................  11  

Analysis  ...................................................................................................................................................................................  11  

Outcome 1  .........................................................................................................................................................................  12  

Outcome 2  .........................................................................................................................................................................  14  

Objective  ............................................................................................................................................................................  14  

Stakeholder  analysis  ..............................................................................................................................................................  20  

Gender analysis  .........................................................................................................................................................................  22  

Monitor and Evaluation  ..........................................................................................................................................................  24  

Budget  ..........................................................................................................................................................................................  27  

Appendix  .....................................................................................................................................................................................  30  

   

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This proposal provides a solution to alleviate malnutrition in the small communities of the Western Highlands by increasing agricultural productivity in female-led community gardens. In cooperation with agricultural and nutrition education, participants will also participate in the implementation of a community garden. It is the goal of Feed by Seed to implement this program and alleviate malnutrition in the Western Highlands by improving access, availability, utilization, and sustainability. At 5 years in length, this pilot program will cost approximately $727,356.00

Feed by Seed recognizes that women are often excluded from agricultural opportunities, especially in Guatemala. By improving production capacity while empowering women in the community, we hope to overcome traditional development constraints.

Part one of the program utilizes women in the community to build and maintain a community garden that will allow community members to access fresh produce. A woman from the community will be selected to serve as garden manager. Women will obtain training from Feed by Seed and from local extension agents.

The second half of this program involves a partnership with UNICEF to educate women about nutrition and produce utilization. Specific lessons include information on micro and macronutrients, and maternal and infant health. After training, women will counsel their peers in the community on the importance of nutrition.

   

INTRODUCTION

Despite being categorized as a lower-middle income country, Guatemala’s chronic malnutrition rate is worse than any other country in the Western Hemisphere, and ranks 6th globally. Guatemala’s income inequality rate is 13th in the world, which can be observed through the culturally-accepted social exclusion of the rural Indigenous populations. The Western Highlands region is home to a majority of this demographic; in this region, chronic malnutrition can be seen in as much as 70% of the population.

Guatemala has been an unstable country since the second half of the 20th century. During this time period, the state went through a variety of military and civilian governments; in 1996, the government signed a peace agreement ending a 36 year-long guerilla war. Since then, the state has been concentrating on development. However, Guatemala remains predominately poor, with seventy-two percent of the population living in poverty and forty-nine percent of these people living in extreme indigence. The 14,373,472 population is growing rapidly due to natural population growth and immigration from other countries due to civil conflict ("World Fact Book").

GEOGRAPHY

Northern Guatemala borders the Caribbean Sea, between Honduras and Belize, while southern Guatemala, between Mexico and El Salvador, reaches the Pacific Ocean. In total area, the country is slightly smaller than the US state of Tennessee. The climate of Guatemala is synonymous with other Central American states: tropical and hot-humid in the lowlands, and slightly cooler in the highlands. Mostly mountainous with narrow coastal plains, Guatemala is host to Volcano Tajamulco; at 4,211 meters, this is the tallest peak in Central America. It is natural then, that Guatemalans experience a high-volcano hazard.

Guatemala’s geographical location also makes it a prime location for hurricanes, tropical storms, and floods. In 1996 Hurricane Mitch devastated the state, followed by equal damage and loss of life from Hurricane Keith in 2000. Both of these storms ravaged the land and have impeded development. As a result of these natural disasters, erosion and water pollution are increasing. Guatemala is experiencing rapid rates of deforestation for timber and crop space ("World Fact Book").

PEOPLE AND SOCIETY

Guatemalans are predominately Mestizo, of European and Indigenous mixed descent. Forty-two percent of the population remains indigenous. They struggle with infant and mother health, illiteracy, a lack of contraceptive use, and extreme malnutrition. Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America, with the highest fertility rate, and fifty percent of its population under nineteen years old. Despite this, it continues to have a GDP half the size of average Central and Latin American states ("World Fact Book").

   

These low standards of living affect the rural Indigenous populations disproportionately. The USAID even described this phenomenon as the “faces of two countries: non-indigenous and indigenous populations”. Table 1 details these discrepancies.

Table 1: Guatemala- “The Faces of Two Countries”

Non-Indigenous Populations Indigenous Populations

- 62% of Guatemala’s Population - 38% of Guatemala’s Population

- 36.2% living in poverty - 74.8% living in poverty

- 6.5 years of public school - 3.8 years of public school

- Urban - Rural

In the Western volcanic lands and traditional highlands, the population is almost entirely rural and Indigenous. In this region, eighty percent of people are living in poverty, and fifty-seven percent of them live in extreme indigence. Altitudes here range from 500-4000 meters, thus there are few roads or access to social services. Due to the dense population within an area of limited available land, deforestation is a major problem. Combined with the steep slopes of the highlands, this catalyzes extreme erosion. Erosion itself leads to a lower productive capacity for agriculture ("State of Food Insecurity " 12-17).

The highest altitudes in this region are inhabited by indigenous peoples only, who grow two main crops: corn (maize) and beans. Because of this, many of these people migrate during rainy seasons to southern coffee and sugar plantations. Most families try to send at least one family to the United States or Mexico. Indigenous families face a high level of social exclusion compared to the rest of the state, and are expected to work in deplorable conditions for lower wages than a non-Indigenous person (Federman)

Within the villages, there is little diversification of crops, and over fifty percent of families do not own land. Only twenty percent of families have the opportunity to grow crops for market, and five percent of these can diversify their crops and also use these skills to find additional agricultural and/or environmental protection employment. Because of extreme landlessness, agricultural development programs have difficulty accessing rural families who do have land tenure. In this region, the economy is characterized by subsistence farming, low agricultural productivity, and limited access to markets ("State of Food Insecurity " 12-17).

Opportunities for growth in this region include introducing community-based gardening and ecotourism, shaded coffee and high-value spice trees, and investment in handicraft production adapted to the international market demand. Likewise, clean water in these highlands presents the opportunity to sell clean water downstream, and introduce small-scale irrigation for improved farming ("State of Food Insecurity " 12-17).

   

PROBLEM

The core problem addressed in this proposal is the extremely high rates of chronic malnutrition in the Guatemalan Western Highlands. Malnutrition and hunger most often results in loss of productivity, higher incidence of disease, and a greater vulnerability of populations, especially of children. Unfortunately, malnutrition in Guatemala is rampant. In fact, Guatemala has one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world, and is more undernourished than any other Central or Latin American state. Fifty-percent of children under five years old are malnourished, while fifteen-percent of these children are underweight or stunted ("World Fact Book").

One of the primary reasons chronic malnutrition and premature death is an insufficient intake of calories or an intake of non-nutritive foods. In order to measure nutritional status, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN utilizes five anthropomorphic indicators ("State of Food Insecurity " 12-17). Signs of chronic malnutrition range from a low weight or stunted growth, to wasting away. Some people exhibit a low body mass index (BMI), or give birth to underweight infants. As shown in Figure 2, over 50% of the population of Guatemala suffers from chronic malnutrition, while the prevalence of stunting is equivalent to many African countries. The prevalence of chronic malnutrition in the Western Highlands is estimated to be much higher; over 70% of children are chronically affected ("State of Food Insecurity " 12-17).

Four factors will determine whether or not someone is more susceptible to malnutrition: availability, accessibility, utilization, and sustainability. Food availability is met when a sufficient quantity of food is available to all people in a community. Availability is impacted by access to roads and markets, and the quantity and diversity of foods produced or imported in the area. Because the Western Highland region is precariously situated within a high altitude, food is unequally distributed across the country. Even if roads are available, the unequal distribution creates food deserts where nothing is being sold.

Figure 1: Prevalence of Malnutrition in Guatemala

   

The top commodities grown in Guatemala are corn (maize), sugar, wheat, oil-crops, beans, poultry, rice, bananas, and pulses. Many of these crops, while carbohydrate dense, are not nutrient dense. Over half of the Guatemalan food supply is cereal-based, while 15% percent is sugar or honey, 10% meat and dairy, and 10% oil/fat ("Food Balance Sheet: Guatemala"). Moreover, the calories grown per capita have continued to decrease since 1994 despite a general rise in agricultural commodity production. This is partially due to the series of destructive tropical storms and droughts that caused crop failure within the agricultural community, as well as the use of unsustainable practices contributing to high rates of topsoil erosion (ICUN).

Food access is defined as having adequate resources to obtain food. In Guatemala, access is the likeliest of causes for malnutrition. Poverty is a key determinant in food insecurity and malnutrition. Due to a variety of factors, including cultural discrimination and a lack of access to government resources, the Western Highlands population is more vulnerable to poverty than others in the state. Thus, the rural Indigenous populations are disproportionately affected. Amongst these populations, those in the upper-most altitudes of the Western highlands are more negatively affected than others. Poverty amongst the indigenous populations translates to a low purchasing power, which means that even when food is available at a market, there is no income to purchase it.

One primary cause of food inaccessibility in Guatemala is the lack of access to land and agricultural resources. Most of the privately owned land is tied up in large estates called latifundias. In fact, the top 3% of farms by size occupy over two-thirds of arable land. Accounting for the remaining commercial farms, he left-over 20% of land is then fractioned into small farms called minifundias. Agricultural development favors large scale development over investing in small stakeholder production. As a result, land ownership of the minifundia is ambiguous; small-scale farmers rarely own their land. Titles are hard to access, and the rural poor have little bargaining power or credit access to acquire more land and the necessary means for legal ownership. Even those who have been granted deeds cannot be sure that these documents will hold up in court (Vargas) ("State of Food Insecurity " 12-17). This insecure tenure not only denies people the opportunity to produce their own food, which is almost always a necessity for the Western Highlands populations, but it also is a deterrent for many of whom would like to expand or invest more in their crop production. A majority of families rely on small, community-oriented farms where share-cropping is a primary practice.

Women face even greater constraints when attempting to enter into the agricultural field. Their interest in production may be to supplement their family’s needs, while others may need to produce more food out of absolute necessity. Despite the seriousness of the situation, women are disproportionally affected by persistent obstacles. It is extremely difficult for a woman to receive land tenure, credit opportunities, education from an extension service or technological and infrastructure updates ("Rural Women Speak Out about Food Insecurity").

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It is imperative that women have access to productive resources. With reference to Guatemala, many of the men emigrate in hopes of employment opportunities elsewhere, and the women are the new family-head (Federman). This role leaves them solely in charge of agriculture. Without access to proper resources, women in the Western Highlands are left without a safety net.

Moreover, women are critical to agricultural and economic growth in developing countries such as Guatemala. Limiting their inclusion into agriculture leaves a significantly vulnerable portion of the population excluded from sustainable, local development. Their reproductive, productive, social, domestic, and occupational roles impact all measures of life in the Western Highlands, and would be especially transformative when engaged in development outcomes such as improved health.

Women are most predominately responsible for feeding and attending to the health needs of their families. Women in the Western Highlands are often responsible for providing most of the family’s food; subsequently, they are obligated to participate in subsistence agriculture. The exclusion of these women from agricultural resources is, then, a major obstacle for reducing malnutrition and increasing development in these areas.

Food utilization describes how produce is used. To clarify, utilization refers to how food is stored and cooked, and perceptions and behaviors surrounding nutrition. Just as there are few agricultural extension services that work predominately in the Western Highlands, there are few nutritional experts who work with these rural Indigenous populations. The lack of health-nutrition services coupled with a limited diet diversity, and a limited knowledge of the positive health impacts of breast feeding and early-life nutrient intake severely influences the malnutrition problem in the Guatemalan Western Highlands. Some families also utilize their fresh produce to feed livestock, while others don’t know how to store produce to last throughout the season. Since women are the primary health providers in the family, not providing them with proper nutrition education is hindering health gains.

Inefficient use of produce is also an issue with underutilization. A large amount of products for export and livestock feed are grown, and a small amount of poorly nutritious food for people. As stated earlier, the top commodities grown in Guatemala are corn (maize), sugar, wheat, oil-crops, beans, poultry, rice, bananas, and pulses. Many of these crops, while carbohydrate dense, are not nutrient dense. Over half of Guatemalan grown food is cereal based, followed by sugar/honey, meat and dairy, oils.

Lastly, unsustainable production systems limit food security when members of the community are not sure where there next meals are coming from (ICUN). This instability can result from environmental practices to cases where resources are no longer available due to lack of funding, etc.

The chronic malnutrition causes are detailed in Figure 2.